Response From MADD, State Lawmaker Swift After Report Highlighting Loopholes In DUI Laws

LEE COUNTY, MISS. (WCBI) – The MIssissippi program coordinator for Mothers Against Drunk Driving is calling for changes in state laws regarding repeat DUI offenders.

This follows a story we first brought you several weeks ago about a Lee County man who was arrested three times in a two week period for DUIs.

A state lawmaker is also promising to look at the issue.

When Sherrel Clark saw our story about a loophole in DUI laws that allows serial offenders to plead guilty to first offense DUI, no matter how many times arrested, she was livid.

“This is an egregious example of our laws and judicial system failing,” Clark said.

Our story looked at the public arrest record of Ronald Wallace Yoe.  The 62 year old Mooreville resident has multiple arrests for DUI.  In fact, nearly two years ago, he was driving under the influence when he hit this car driven by Lee County resident Haley Grace Jones.  In the car with Jones, her newborn baby.  Luckily, both Jones and her baby were not seriously injured.

“He was so far over he hit me on my passenger side of my vehicle, he hit us head on.  I could have lost my life and not only mine but my child’s,” Jones said.

Since then, Yoe has been arrested multiple times for DUI.  But according to Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson, the law allows serial DUI offenders to plead to a lesser charge, no matter how many times they are arrested.

“You have to go out there and in the court, and look at how many times was he convicted,” Sheriff Johnson said.

Yoe is being held without bond in the Lee County Jail, because his record now shows two DUI convictions.   A third DUI , within five years, is a felony.

MADD is calling for a change in Mississippi law to close the loophole for repeat DUI offenders.  Until then,  the group is pressing for a better way for law enforcement to share records about arrests and convictions.  There are no centralized computer records for most state criminal courts in Mississippi.

“If by chance there’s another arrest later, anywhere statewide, that previous arrest shows up, so now this one is not arrest number one, it’s arrest number two,” Clark said.

District 19 State Representative Randy Boyd was alarmed after seeing our story about the current DUI laws.

“I’m checking into it to find out what we can do, how we can re word the law, how we can do something that’s going to protect our citizens, because that’s what this is all about.  It’s not so much protecting the guy who is DUI, it’s protecting the other people who aren’t,” Rep. Boyd said.

Representative Boyd hopes to have more information to take to Jackson when lawmakers meet for their regular session in January.

A law that went into effect in 2016 makes a fourth DUI a felony, no matter how long ago previous convictions happened. The older state law makes a third DUI a felony, but only if they are within five years of one another.